Review Detail

8.9 3 10
(Updated: July 05, 2021)
Overall rating
 
9.0
Audio/Video Quality
 
9.0
Audio Editing
 
9.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
9.0
The Twilight Zone and Star Trek are two of my absolute favorite classic TV shows, so naturally this concept would appeal to me. And "Spectre of the Gun" is the most "ghostly" of the ST TOS episodes, which makes it the perfect candidate for the TZ treatment. Sadly, making it black and white means losing the red skies, which are a very important part of the atmosphere, but at the same time the monochrome enhances other moments (those closeup shots of the clock are more eerie in B&W).

And it's surprising how well this works after removing almost half of the episode. It feels complete and totally coherent, I only miss what I miss because I know the original well. Though, there are some aspects that spoil the experience a bit, and I'm afraid they need to be pointed out:

- First, the use of the CGI versions of the FX shots. Those are an eyesore for me every time (digital effects just don't belong in the sixties), and even more so when the edit aims to make the episode look even more vintage than it is. Still, I guess it's possible that The Warlord only had access to the CGIed versions of the episodes (my set has both those and the originals, but that might not be the case for all releases), so maybe he just did what he could.
- The slowed down establishing shots of the Enterprise at the start and end, in addition to being CGI, move in a jerky, jumpy way. I don't know the software used, but it shouldn't be that hard to fix.
- The added episode credits, while using the correct font, scream "digitally added". Again, I don't know the software The Warlord used, but for these things a slight Gaussian blur goes a long way.
- There's a quite noticeable hard cut in the audio near the beginning (00:53, right before the Melkotian first speaks). Given that this is the first edit by The Warlord that I have seen, that made me fear the worst, but fortunately there's no more issues of this kind (there's one at 10:38, between "Mr. Spock" and "Except for our handguns...", but that's actually in the original episode!) and other than that it's a great editing job.

And after all, this is an old-ish edit (two years and a few months, but The Warlord has released a lot more since), so for all I know these issues may not be present in his other edits. In any case, a very enjoyable and recommendable edit for fans of classic TV.
Report this review Was this review helpful? 1 0

Comments